


the light in your hands

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, DM!Hux, Dungeons and Dragons, Edgelord!Kylo Ren, Explicit Sexual Content, Hux Regrets Everything, I'll hold, M/M, Millicent the cat - Freeform, Non-Linear Narrative, Poe might lowkey be Hux's ex, Rey is amazing and perfect in all universes, Soft Kylux, Troll!Poe, a poor understanding of D&D mechanics, background Finn/Rose and Finn/Poe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 04:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13872804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: It begins with a d20. Armitage finds it by Ben’s monitor. He’s tearing through the printouts and wrappers scattered across Ben’s desk in a search for a timesheet, muttering angrily to himself. He brushes aside a mound of papers and sees the die, and the sight of it is so unexpected, so out of place, that Armitage’s hand shakes a bit, hovering over it. After all, this d20 must belong to Ben Solo,Ben Solo, who keeps a hand grip strengthener in his pencil cup, for god’s sake. The die sits under his disbelieving stare, innocuous enough. Its sides are black and worn, with the paint chipping out of the numbering.“You play?” Ben says.The story of Armitage Hux, Ben Solo, and a series of critical rolls.





	the light in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> Here is an attempt to atone for [my previous Kylux fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13789587) with a happy AU and 100% enthusiastic consent! Except writing this made me sad because I don't live in the same city as my friends. 
> 
> The title is yet another line from "[Faded Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd_nfwzdts8)" by BØRNS (I have a problem): _But I see the light in your hands / you're the man with the plan, oh yeah!_
> 
> Many thanks to [@FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) for the edits and plot suggestions.
> 
> C: Thank you for sharing _your_ New York with me.

 

Snoke and his praetorian guard are dead, lying broken, hewn, and burnt at Kylo Ren’s feet. He and Rey have just fought back to back, landing blows with a rhythm and choreography so perfect they may as well have been dancing, one with the Force and with each other. But the moment is slipping away. Snoke’s chambers are burning down around them, and the first of the Resistance ships are being blown apart by the First Order, bursting into fragments one by one on the monitors. Kylo and Rey stare at each other over the red debris and redder bodies, panting. Even their breaths are beginning to slide out of sync.

 

 _What_ , Armitage thinks, _are you going to do now, Kylo Ren?_

 

“I assume the mantle of the Supreme Leader,” Ben says, in his slow, thoughtful voice, “and I convince Rey to join me on the dark side.”

 

 _Christ_ , Armitage thinks. _Christ, not that._

 

Poe dribbles gin back into his glass. Finn stares; Rose groans. “You _what_ now,” Poe says. “What the fuck, Ben, you just killed Snoke!”

 

Ben ignores him. He turns to Armitage. “I convince Rey to join me,” he repeats.

 

Armitage looks at Rey, who shrugs.

 

“I mean, it’s a twist, I guess,” she says. She toasts Armitage with her mug. “One of many. Knock yourself out, Benny.”

 

“Charisma check,” Armitage says, numb. First Poe and his mutiny, bolstered by a series of improbable nines and tens, and now this—this fucking game is out of control. He frowns at Ben, trying to decide whether Ben is trying to troll him, _again_ , but Ben just meets his eyes, expressionless, and waits. “Yes,” he says, “fine, all right, but let me do it.”

 

He retreats behind the screen, ignoring Ben’s protest.

 

Ben fails the check.

 

Armitage describes Kylo Ren’s disappointment and longing as he reaches out to Rey and is rebuffed. In rapid succession, Ben crit fails his attack, defy danger, and defend rolls, too, and ends up unconscious on the floor of Snoke’s burning chambers (“Bye-bye, boudoir, boudoir, bye-bye,” Poe sings in falsetto) while Rey makes her escape.

 

“Fuck!” Ben says.

 

“Like I said,” Rey says, smiling into her tea as Ben glowers, “ _knock yourself out_.”

 

“Fuck yeah,” Finn says. “Resistance forever, baby.”

 

“I mean, it’s not like I don’t feel the draw of the dark side sometimes,” Rey says, “but come on, Ben, I’m, like, one hundred percent lawful good.”

 

“Lawful _great_ ,” Finn says, grinning at her.

 

“To be continued,” Armitage announces. They wrap up the session and tally up their experience points, Rose and Poe murmuring about their own failed perception checks and the traitorous code-breaking NPC, Ben staring into space.

 

Rey excuses herself first; she has an early flight to San Francisco tomorrow. For a moment, Ben looks like he wants to get up and walk her to the door and button her into her coat, but he just fidgets and sits on his hands. Finn, Rose, and Poe stay a little longer to chat, ignoring Armitage and beeping at one another until they’re laughing so hard they spill their drinks. Eventually, they leave too, bundling themselves up—Finn in his puffy white parka and Poe into his vintage jacket, which is too thin, surely, for New York in January, and too orange for New York in general. Rose refuses to take her bottle of wine back with her; she sticks her arm through Armitage’s slow-to-close door and waves goodbye. They hear her humming all the way to the elevator.

 

Armitage dampens a dishcloth and swipes at the sticky residue across his coffee table. He has been trying, with little success, to get Poe and Finn to use his coasters. Perhaps it’s for the best, though:  they are rather nice coasters, made of black glass, and brittle, and Poe and Finn tend to be careless about objects.

 

Ben, lounging in the corner of Armitage’s deep, plush sofa with Millicent purring on his lap, says, “I know you fudged that roll.”

 

“Which one?” Armitage says.

 

“You know which one,” Ben says. “You know exactly which one I mean.”

 

“I don’t,” Armitage says, scrubbing harder at the gleaming surface of the table. “In any case, you failed them all.”

 

“Bullshit,” Ben says.

 

“Asking Rey to rule the galaxy with you, as your queen and consort—preposterous!” Armitage says. Ben looks sulky. “Even if you _had_ rolled above a seven, she would never have agreed to it. You need to run these things by me beforehand, _Solo_ —you can’t just try to hijack the storyline with whatever half-baked—”

 

“You let _Poe_ hijack the storyline,” Ben points out. “You let him _literally_ hijack an entire star cruiser. You didn’t roll for him _behind a screen_.”

 

“That was different,” Armitage says.

 

“How was it different?” Ben says. “You were freaking out during his turn, I could tell. The Resistance is in deep shit now, all because he went off half-cocked. Why didn’t you just tell Poe that he failed his rolls, too, huh, _Armie_? Put us all in a better position?”

 

“Fine,” Armitage says. “ _Mea maxima culpa._ I changed the roll.”

 

“Why?” Ben demands.

 

“To _save_ you,” Armitage says. “To save Kylo Ren, I mean. He could have been redeemed. I was _planning_ to redeem him.”

 

Ben rolls his eyes. “There’s enough of that in canon,” he says. “Here’s an original idea:  how about you let me play my character the way I want to?”

 

“You’re playing a bloody space Neo-Nazi,” Armitage says.

 

“I’m playing a _religious fanatic_ ,” Ben says. He unfolds from the sofa and swipes at the cat hair across the thighs of his trousers; Millicent evacuates the premises, looking affronted. “Whatever. I’ll see you next week.” He shrugs on his coat (long, black, wool) and his scarf (long, black, cashmere), and ducks out into the hallway.

 

The door closes with a soft click. Millicent stretches. Armitage frowns.

 

 

 

The group chat bulges with messages:  362 by the end of the workday, not including all the memes. Armitage doesn’t bother going through them. Poe texts him separately twenty minutes later:   _kinda weird vibes yesterday_

 

 _You’re imagining things_ , Armitage writes back. _Flyboy_ , he adds.

 

 _nice_ , Poe replies. _Bens so #edgy_

 

 _It’s your fault_ , Armitage says. _You and your mutiny. You’re a bad influence._

 

_aw what come on_

_just keepin it real armie_

 

Ben texts him at eleven p.m.:  _sorry_

 

 _?_ Armitage writes. Ben doesn’t reply.

 

 

 

Armitage met Ben the summer before the big crash—back when the banks had more than enough money to go around for raucous after-work parties with the interns, wining and dining them with galas, excursions, tickets to sporting events. Armitage develops a low opinion of Ben Solo, who is loud and disorganized during the day, surviving on protein shakes and instant-messaging Armitage with an atrocious disregard for punctuation; at night, he transforms into a jägerbomb-fueled monster, and his desk is always a mess.

 

Ben calls him _General Hux_ , sarcastically, at first behind his back, and then just within earshot, giggling, and finally right to his face, with a slow, lopsided smile. Armitage tries not to call Ben anything at all.

 

It begins with a d20; Armitage finds it by Ben’s monitor. He’s tearing through the printouts and wrappers scattered across Ben’s desk in a search for a timesheet, muttering angrily to himself. He brushes aside a mound of papers and sees the die, and the sight of it is so unexpected, so out of place, that Armitage’s hand shakes a bit, hovering over it. After all, this d20 must belong to Ben Solo, _Ben Solo_ , who keeps a _hand grip strengthener_ in his pencil cup, for god’s sake. The die sits under his disbelieving stare, innocuous enough. Its sides are black and worn, with the paint chipping out of the numbering.

 

“You play?” Ben says.

 

Armitage twitches. He turns and sees Ben looking at him, impassive, sucking more of that revolting protein shake down through a straw. Saliva floods Armitage’s mouth at the sight of it, and he tries not to gag.

 

“What?” he says faintly.

 

“Dungeons and dragons,” Ben says. He nods at the die, placid. “It’s fun. We should play sometime. You’d be a wizard, I’m guessing?”

 

“Soldier,” Armitage replies, after a moment’s hesitation.  

 

Ben nods again. “Red Death expansion,” he says, gaze lingering on Armitage’s hair. “Appropriate.”

 

“Where’s your fucking timesheet, Solo?” Armitage says, flushing.

 

“All right, easy, easy,” Ben says slowly, throwing up his hands; bits of protein shake slide down the inside of his cup in horrible clumps, and Armitage _does_ gag this time, though Ben doesn’t seem to notice. He glances at the storm of papers across his keyboard and chair and says, still slowly, “I have no idea where it is.”

 

“Christ,” Armitage says.

 

It’s their last interaction for the summer. Ben never finds his timesheet. At the end of the week, he packs up his desk and goes back to school. He returns a year later, bigger than Armitage remembers, and so somber:  sober, unsmiling, covered in a silence so heavy and impenetrable that it may as well be a mask.

 

They both leave at the end of the third quarter, Armitage for another investment bank, Ben for his hedge fund.

 

 

 

Ben texts him out of the blue several months later. _It’s Ben Solo. Roll for initiative._

 

Armitage spends a full five minutes composing and erasing a variety of messages. _It’s good to hear from you_ , he doesn’t say. _What happened_ , he doesn’t ask.

_What on earth are you talking about_ , he types, then starts to delete that, too—

 

 _Hux, right?_ Ben says. _I didn’t get the wrong number?_

 

Armitage is tempted to tease him and say no, or ask who Hux is, or write something in another language; he resists, trampling down his giddiness.

 

 _Yes, this is Hux_ , he says.

 

Ben calls him a moment later. Armitage may be giddy, but Ben sounds _excited_.

 

“Remember Finn?” he says.

 

“How could I forget?” Armitage says. Finn’s exit is the stuff of legend now, woven inextricably into the lore of their old firm. Armitage used to hear the overwhelmed juniors repeating the story amongst themselves after all-nighters, rendering it grander and madder with every subsequent retelling, adding malicious macros, then smashed monitors, then fireworks, then hand-to-hand combat, and finally police intervention, muttering, _I’m gonna pull a Finn if they keep this shit up, just watch._

 

Ben chuckles. Armitage’s ear goes hot.

 

“He goes to my gym,” Ben says. “We were thinking of starting a campaign. You still play? D&D, I mean. We need a DM. You want in?”

 

It was only a few times at university; barely even a campaign. Armitage decided almost immediately afterwards that he had no time for games, for make-believe.

 

“Hux?”

 

“Yes,” Armitage says. He’ll have to order a gamebook—several gamebooks. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

 

“Nice,” Ben says. He rattles off a date and time, and an address in Queens, and Hux jots it down on the back of a Bloomberg printout. He sits quietly in his darkened office after they hang up, thinking over and over, _Ben._

 

 

 

A few days before they’re scheduled to begin, Ben asks Armitage to meet him for coffee. To talk about the game, of course; he’s very quick to clarify.

 

Armitage goes, less reluctantly than he would like to admit. He squeezes the stanchion and looks at the tendons of his hand against the silver; he watches the city sink beneath the rails as the train hums aboveground.

 

Ben is waiting for him on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. His hair is longer, and his face is clean-shaven. A chill wind is blowing, dragging Armitage's breath into mist, but Ben's dressed much the way he used to when they worked together, in a black suit and tie, and so broad, so tall, so perfectly formed; Armitage has had dreams that have begun like this, and he half expects the outlines of Ben's body to start wavering like a mirage.  _My god,_  he thinks,  _my god_.

 

“Hey,” Ben says, and he smiles. Armitage feels an answering pull in his stomach, a molten, glowing feeling, and he clamps it down brutally; in another moment he'll be undone. "Good to see you, General."

 

“Hi,” Armitage says, schooling his face into careful expressionlessness, and he follows Ben down the street.

 

Ben has chosen a ridiculous café in a gentrifying neighborhood, a hipster’s haven with exposed brick walls, industrial seating, and idiotic little placards printed with conversation starters. _Ask me what I’m reading. Ask me what my novel is about._

 

But the coffee is incredibly strong and dark. Armitage takes his first sip and raises his eyebrows at Ben, who nods but doesn’t smile.

 

“Yeah, so,” Ben says. “I want to be evil.”

 

“What?” Armitage says. _Ask me about my alignment_ , he thinks. The espresso machine hisses behind them.

 

“For this campaign,” Ben says. “For my character—Kylo Ren. Whatever you’re planning, I want to be evil.”

 

“You don’t seem the type,” Armitage says.

 

“Don’t I?” Ben says. “I work at a hedge fund. I wear black. I punch stuff for fun. I’m a monster.”

 

“Yes, all very sinister,” Armitage says flatly. He sips at his coffee. “Tell me more about Kylo,” he says, and Ben grins.

 

 

 

The first campaign begins smoothly enough. Armitage plans to weave together the separate threads of a sprawling intergalactic plot. Rey’s fighter emerges from the far reaches of a desert planet; Finn’s ranger crawls forth from a clone factory; Poe’s rogue careens through space, a hotshot pilot. Ben’s paladin broods aboard a massive star destroyer. They converge on Jakku, Rey’s sand-stricken world.

 

There are some setbacks. For one, Ben insists on a custom weapon:  a laser sword with flaming crossguards, which Armitage argues is both hideous in design and game-breakingly overpowered.

 

“Okay, fine,” Ben says, “what if I made it myself and it’s kind of a mess? Like, the laser blade’s all jagged and weird, and the reason the crossguards flame is because the Kyber crystal that powers it is _cracked_ —because there’s too much _raw, uncontained energy_ —so it needs these lateral vents, right? And—”

 

He sketches it on a piece of paper for Armitage to see. He’s clearly spent an alarming amount of time thinking about it.

 

“That’s a goth laser sword if I ever saw one,” Finn says, peering over Ben’s shoulder. “That’s some Hot Topic bullshit, Ben.”

 

“Oh, fuck off,” Ben says, elbowing him. “Stick to your basic bitch blaster and let me live my life. Can I have it, Hux? C’mon, please?”

 

His voice is eager. A memory flashes across Armitage’s mind:  Ben, young and bright-eyed, the straw trailing from his mouth. The slow, wide smile.

 

“Fine,” he says.

 

And then there’s Poe.

 

“The imperial soldiers are after you,” Armitage says. “Your ship is disabled, you’re likely concussed, and they’re closing in. You can’t read their expressions through their helmets, but you know they’re displeased. What will you do?”

 

Poe tries to jump-start the ship, to no avail. He rolls a two.

 

“You’re illuminated by the resulting sparks,” Armitage says, with a great deal of malice. Poe has spent the last thirty minutes poking and jabbing his grubby little fingers into every available or imagined loophole—and banging away at Armitage’s last nerve, too. Armitage is ready to murder Poe’s character—and Poe—in cold blood. “They can see exactly where you’re hiding, and they’re reaching for their blasters.”

 

“Well, shit,” Poe says. He’s already starting to grin at Armitage, eyes gleaming with mischief. “Okay. Okay. Here’s what I do:  I turn to my cute little astromech droid, and I’m swaying a bit and the droid’s all banged up, and I say, BB-8, we’re in a hell of a mess, aren’t we? And BB says, _beep beep beep beep_ —”

 

“For the last time,” Armitage interrupts, pinching the bridge of his nose, “you’re a rogue, not a ranger. You don’t _get_ an animal companion—”

 

“Okay, Finn can have him,” Poe says. “Right, Finn?”

 

“Sure, babe,” Finn says. He winks. “Beep.”

 

“—and even if you _did_ ,” Armitage continues, “it wouldn’t be a robot—”

 

“Droid,” Rey corrects, and Armitage looks at her in agony— _et tu?_

 

“Absolutely not,” he finishes. “No droid companions.”

 

“If your tragic backstory NPCs get R2-D2 and C-3PO,” Poe says, “then I get BB-8. Or Finn does, since he’s the ranger. Which means I get BB-8 anyway, because I get Finn.” He grins at Finn. “I know we haven’t even met yet, officially, but it’s going to be an epic bromance. Or romance, even.”

 

“Definitely,” Finn says. “I’m in, Armie. Group vote for the pet droid?”

 

Armitage looks at Ben. Ben, looking a bit put out that the conversation is no longer revolving around his ludicrous laser sword, crumples up his sketch and says, “I don’t care.”

 

Rey smiles and shrugs. Poe gets his droid.

 

 

 

When he’s not staring dead-eyed into a screen or badgering Armitage for bizarre power-ups in-game, Ben trains at a Muay Thai gym on Lafayette, seven days a week. The Friday after two funding deals close, and he has a bit of spare time, Armitage leaves work at a reasonable hour and tags along to see “what all the hype is about,” as Poe puts it. He has a vague idea of incorporating Ben’s combat style into the narrative. He’s sure Ben won't object to that; in fact, he thinks Ben will be pleased.

 

Rey is there, hair pulled back in a series of loops, bandaging her hands into wraps. Finn stands beside her in an orange t-shirt that says _PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW_. It’s very obviously one of Poe’s.

 

“Whoa!” Finn says loudly. Rey looks up from her wraps. “Armitage! What are you doing here? You thinking about signing up? Gonna join the _fight_ side?”

 

“No,” Armitage says. He doesn’t elaborate further.

 

Finn opens his mouth, then closes it again as Ben lopes from the locker room. He’s doused in black:  black shirt, black shorts, black handwraps, bare feet. He doesn’t give Armitage a second glance and advances to the far corner of the room, pulling his hair into a knot at the back of his skull. Finn shrugs and trails after him.

 

The hour begins with a quick stretch and some rope skipping. The fighters move on to shadowboxing and padwork next, pairing or tripling off. Ben, Finn, and Rey wheel into a triad, working on optimal combinations and then roundhouse and knee kicks under the fierce direction of the patrolling instructor, a huge, ice-blonde Amazon of a woman, even taller than Ben. They’re all wearing pads now—big black and white gloves, forearm and shin guards, and belly protectors—looking for all the world like the armored soldiers of Armitage’s star field. Finn hunches forward, one padded arm braced above his stomach like a knight with a shield.

 

“Come at me, bro,” he says, and Rey obliges. She grapples with Finn unhesitatingly, nailing him in the stomach with her knee.

 

Three minutes later, she dances back, panting, and Ben subs in. He sends Finn staggering backward a few paces with his first powerful kick, and Finn drops his stance and swears.

 

“You son of a bitch,” he says, laughing. Ben squares up, silent, serious, and the smile slips from Finn’s lips. “All right, let’s do this,” he says, eyes narrowing. He salutes, slapping his gloved fist against his padded forearm, and steadies himself. Ben kicks again, torqueing forward with a shout.

 

They trade off in an anticlockwise pattern, moving from knee kicks to elbow strikes. Toward the top of the hour, Rey’s hair loops are saturated, and Finn’s orange tee has gone several shades darker. The sweat is dripping down Ben’s jaw. He pauses a moment between blows, glove wedged under his arm, dragging the edge of his shirt up to wipe at his face and throat. The stomach beneath is pale and glistening and _tight_ , and Armitage swallows with a click.

 

 _Christ_ , he thinks.

 

“Break!” the instructor yells. There is a loud, simultaneous ripping of Velcro, as each person in the gym removes one glove to take a sip of water. Ben wipes his face again, grinning whitely at something Rey says.

 

Armitage breathes out, feeling winded.

 

 

 

In Armitage’s galactic conflict, Rey is reluctant, frightened, and lonely, though she’s slowly begun to grow into her own, one roll at a time. In reality, she lives as she fights, without hesitation, staunch and steadfast and _swift_. She works for a nonprofit group, organizing women’s education and literacy programs under the vast umbrella of the Organa Foundation, and her ideals are unshakeable.

 

Pursuing his notion that his galaxy, and indeed his universe, must have some balance between the forces of good and evil, Armitage gives Rey a laser sword, too. Ben starts to argue against it, but Armitage doesn’t listen. He likes the idea of her with one, as upright and noble as a knight.

 

 

 

“You have a cat,” Ben says, the first time Armitage hosts. It’s an important session:  Rey’s fighter is about to encounter Ben’s paladin, with far-reaching consequences for everyone in the assembled party and for the galaxy. Armitage doesn’t want any distractions; he needs a space devoid of Finn and Poe’s cavalcade of noisy flatmates, devoid of Ben’s presence. Rey’s studio would be adequate for these purposes, if only it weren’t the size of a shoebox. So Armitage summons them to his flat instead.

 

Ben is the first to arrive, and he stands stock still while Millicent rubs her way around his ankles, purring up a storm. “A cat,” he repeats, sounding as though he can’t believe it. And bugger Millicent, Armitage thinks; it took her months to warm up to him, months of coaxing and pampering and a full week of nights crouched in the hallway, reading to her while she cowered in the bath, but she gloms onto Ben right away.

 

“Yes,” Armitage says. “You sound surprised.”

 

“You just don’t seem like the type,” Ben says, finally reaching down to pat her. She twines eagerly around his hand. “Hi—”

 

“Millicent,” Armitage says.

 

Ben raises an eyebrow. “Millicent,” he says, scratching under her chin. She fairly trills with joy. “Hi. Yes, hello. Nice to meet you.”

 

“Not the type?” Armitage prompts, taking his coat. It’s warm under his fingers. “Did you imagine me with a boa constrictor? A lizard? An eel in a tank?” All very phallic, he realizes, and closes his mouth tightly.

 

“I figured you’d have a Roomba,” Ben says, looking as though he can read the thoughts flying quicksilver-fast through Armitage’s brain—thoughts that fizzle out into dazed nothingness as Ben’s mouth quirks into a smile. “An anti-pet. A droid. I have one too.”

 

“A cat?” Armitage says stupidly.

 

“A Roomba,” Ben says.

 

Armitage’s phone rings. He turns away as he answers it, but he can still feel Ben’s eyes on him, burning against his back.

 

“Uh, yeah,” the doorman says. “I’ve got a, uh, Poe Dameron down here for ya? You expecting him? He—” some mumbled conversation, laughter, and the doorman sounds like he’s smiling when he comes back on the line “—he says he’ll hold?”

 

“My man,” Armitage hears Poe say, and the doorman _giggles_. 

 

Armitage rolls his eyes. “Send him up,” he says.

 

“Hey, baby, hey,” Poe says, breezing in a few minutes later with a six-pack and a plastic bag of snacks from the bodega. He sets the beer down at his feet and scoops Millicent up as he straightens, laughing. She wriggles in his arms, mewing in protest as he rubs his unshaven cheek against her little head. “Sweetie!”

 

“Dameron,” Ben says, measured. Armitage finds this reassuring, for some reason. Poe has charmed Finn and Rey and Armitage’s doorman and probably also the bodega owner, and the bodega owner’s _entire family_ —and Armitage, too, once upon a time—but Ben, already slipping into character, has become a fortress overlooking a dark ocean, and Poe’s smile breaks into seafoam against the rocks.

 

Poe is undeterred.

 

“Hey, Solo, how’s it going?” he says, grinning wide. The phone rings again:  Finn and Rey have arrived. Poe releases Millicent, who flies around Armitage’s bedroom door and disappears; he kicks off his shoes, throws his jacket into a corner, and cracks open a beer. “Let’s get this party started, huh?”

 

 

 

That session, Kylo Ren captures Poe. Poe rolls, unsuccessfully, to increase the homoerotic tension of the moment; Ben starts his turn and rolls to interrogate Poe telepathically. His phone rings as he picks up the dice.

 

Ben glances at the number on the screen, frowns, and swipes upward. “Kylo—I mean, Ben Solo,” he says. He listens for a moment. Then he throws the dice all the way over their heads and against the wall.

 

“Oi,” Armitage says, jolting, “ _careful_ ,” and Millicent gives eager chase, batting the dice under the couch.

 

Ben silences his phone and shoves it back into his front pocket. “Wrong number,” he says, breathing out hard through his nose. Rey looks at him with some concern.

 

“Ben,” she starts to say, “who—”

 

Ben ignores her. “Where were we?”

 

“You were gazing lovingly into my eyes,” Poe says. Finn snorts.

 

“You were ascertaining the whereabouts of his idiotic droid and the map to the swordsman of legend,” Armitage says. “Go pick up the dice. Don’t throw things—don’t throw _my_ things.”

 

“Sorry,” Ben says.

 

Rey’s phone rings a moment later. She picks up and goes into the hallway to answer it, and Ben’s eyes follow her, the frown reasserting itself, creasing his face. Armitage pretends not to notice.

 

 

 

Over the course of four months, Armitage leads his troupe of players on a freewheeling journey through the galaxy. They meet warlords and madmen, smugglers and pirates, aliens and droids. Armitage draws on history, both ancient and recent, for the political systems and the economic and ideological wars. He models one NPC on Ben’s Friday evening Muay Thai instructor and another on the chairman of a client company, bent and wizened, with a mossy, mischievous smile and unusually large and pointed ears. Snoke, however, is a monster of his own creation.

 

“Snoke?” Poe says. “Really— _Snoke_?”

 

“What’s wrong with that?” Armitage demands.

 

“That’s—it’s—nothing, uh, nothing,” Poe says, meeting Ben’s level stare. “It’s fine, I guess.”

 

Armitage tolerates Poe’s chaos, balancing it against Finn’s unceasing desire to do good. He nudges Rey’s fighter toward heroism and heroic speeches. He indulges Ben’s monologues about the true nature of the dark side.

 

They end the campaign on a hopeful note, just in time for Christmas. Finn invites Armitage to a party and a dinner; Armitage declines. The entire week leading up to Christmas Day, Finn bombards him with over-saturated square images of his flat all done up in fairy lights, of Rey grinning over a batch of iced biscuits, of Poe puckering up into the camera, dangling mistletoe. There’s a new girl in one of the frames, soft and beaming, with black hair drawn back from dark smiling eyes and a crescent pendant around her neck. Armitage spends the holiday rereading _Ab Urbe Condita_ , volume eight, with Millicent burrowed in the crook of his arm.

 

 _merry christmas,_ Ben says, three days late. _doing anything for NYE?_

 

_No, you?_

 

_working. joyful and triumphant_

 

 _O come all ye faithful, to the office_ , Armitage replies, in a burst of frivolity. He hits send before he can reconsider; quickly, he adds, _Don’t you have family to visit?_

 

Ben replies at two in the morning. _don’t you?_

Armitage rings in the New Year alone.

 

 

 

Rose, the girl with the crescent-shaped pendant, joins in the last week of January, about a month after she and Finn start dating.

 

“I’m Rose Tico,” she says, bright-eyed, clinging to Finn’s hand while he grins proudly at the assembled party. “I want to taze Finn.”

 

Finn chokes. Poe laughs hysterically.

 

“I beg your pardon?” Armitage says.

 

“In the game, in the game,” Rose says. “I wanna taze him. I can do that, right?”

 

“Let’s pick your class first,” Finn says, coughing. “Okay, baby?”

 

Rose chooses a fighter, and the second campaign begins with a round of champagne in real life and a hasty evacuation in-game. The party is separated again, scattered to the far reaches of the galaxy. To Armitage’s mingled delight and exasperation, Poe rolls catastrophically, reducing his resistance fighters’ supplies and equipment to a skeleton crew, inadvertently sending Rose’s character to her doom within the first sixty minutes.

 

“Damn it, Poe,” Finn says.

 

“It’s okay,” Rose says cheerfully, waving off Poe’s apologies. “I figured this might happen. I have a backup.” She describes her new character, a technician whose only sister has just died in a kamikaze attack on an enemy destroyer. Poe cringes.

 

Finn tries to board an escape pod. He fails stealth and charisma checks, and then Rose’s technician, to Rose’s unending delight, stuns and imprisons him for desertion.

 

“Got you, babe,” Rose crows.

 

Finn’s mouth twitches. “You sure did.”

 

Armitage pivots them away from the mess on the rebel ship, bringing them swooping over an ocean planet, where Rey seeks to convince an epic level swordsman to join their cause.

 

She fails her charisma rolls, too.

 

“What the hell is wrong with these dice?” Finn says, as Rey’s next rolls lead to a mudslide, the destruction of a cart full of goods, and, finally, the partial collapse of a house. Relations with the inhabitants of the ocean planet are about to deteriorate beyond repair, and the swordsman still won’t speak to her. “Armie, are these things loaded? Are you doing this on purpose?”

 

Armitage ignores him. He draws the narrative to Ben’s character, still brooding aboard a starship.

 

“Kylo wants to smash his helmet,” Ben announces. “That’s a free action, right?”

 

“Make him roll!” Poe exclaims, slapping the table. “Make him roll, god damn it. I want to see how bad he fucks this up.”

 

Armitage frowns. “Might I remind you, Ben, that the helmet is a relic of the ancient religion to which your character is deeply devoted, with both personal and spiritual significance?”

 

“You may,” Ben says, unperturbed. “He still wants to destroy it.”

 

Sighing, Armitage asks, “Why does Kylo want to destroy his helmet?”

 

“Because he’s angry,” Ben says. He tips his beer bottle against his lips, smiling a bit, and Armitage looks away as he swallows.

 

“He’s _always_ angry,” Finn says. “That’s his secret, Armie.”

 

Rey snorts. “Wrong universe, Finn,” she says.

 

“Same corporate overlord, though,” Finn says.

 

“Roll to destroy your helmet,” Armitage says, massaging his temples. Ben rolls a _twelve_.

 

 

 

They meet at Ben’s place two weeks after Kylo Ren tries to entice Rey to the dark side. Ben’s flat is shockingly normal, although it is _nice_ , with a full bedroom, stainless steel appliances, new hardwood flooring, and a brilliant view, complete with window seat. Barely any books in the architectural-looking bookcase, though, which Armitage thinks is a pity. The bedroom door is ajar, and Armitage sneaks a glance:  punishingly minimal—no nightstand, no bedside lamp. A huge bed, neatly made, with silky-looking black sheets. It doesn’t look slept in at all. Armitage looks back at Ben, at the dark circles under Ben’s eyes.

 

“Selling out has its perks,” Ben says. He’s mixing drinks at the counter, as Finn and Rose literally press their noses to the glass, oohing and aahing. “Doesn’t this make you miss the good old days, Finn?”

 

Finn shakes his head, grinning. “No way,” he says. “Nothin’ good about those days. Never going back. Those bridges are burned. I salted the fucking earth, man.”

 

Finn’s flat compares unfavorably to a hovel—crammed full of things and people, of Poe’s instruments and Rose’s gadgets. There’s always noise, of music, of laughter, of a coffee grinder, of Poe swearing at the router, of the traffic three floors below in the street and the N, Q, and R trains clattering by at all hours. The atmosphere is warm and lively and a little bit overwhelming. Rey has a key, and she comes and goes as she pleases.

 

“Here,” Ben says, unsmiling. He passes Armitage a lowball glass.

 

The sun is setting through the window, turning everything in Ben’s flat to gold. Ben’s fingers are damp with condensation. Armitage peers at the glass, which is near-to-overflowing with amber liquid.

 

“What is it?” he asks, sniffing at the rim:  it smells heady and strong, and sweet, too, saturated with vanilla.

 

“Bourbon,” Ben says. “Cider. Lemon. Benedictine. Drink up.”

 

“Ooh, fancy, gimme,” Rose says, making little grabbing motions with her hands. Ben cracks a smile and slides the second glass toward her.

 

“Finn?” he says.

 

“Nah, I’m good,” Finn says. “Gotta keep my wits about me. Have a feeling Armie’s about to throw a curveball my way.”

 

Poe has a gig, and Rey is attending a training event in California. Ben is hosting, but there’s a problem in the Asian markets: a position is trading badly. He sets up with his laptop at the counter while Armitage leads Rose and Finn into a flashback quest, a noisy, rattling adventure to a casino planet, full of droids and war profiteers and huge, moose-like creatures called fathiers, scored with whip-marks and worn down by the weight of their saddles. Finn and Rose destroy the casino and free the fathiers. Ben applauds sardonically from his seat several feet away, and Rose _cries_.

 

The next day is an American holiday, President’s Day. Armitage still ends the session at ten, exactly three drinks and three hours later. Finn and Rose decide to go to an open mic night; Armitage decides to go home.

 

“Hux, wait,” Ben says, catching him at the door.

 

Armitage turns. He feels a bit off-kilter, warm and drowsy. He’s looking forward to the cold air on his cheeks.

 

“What is it?” Armitage says.

 

Ben looks exhausted. He keeps rubbing at his eyes, digging his knuckles into the sockets.

 

“You wanna stay over?” he says, and Armitage’s heart thuds in his chest. “Markets are closed tomorrow.”

 

Armitage swallows. “I have to feed Millicent,” he says.

 

“Okay,” Ben says, slow and easy. Not a flicker of disappointment. “Lunch on Tuesday?”

 

“Okay,” Armitage says. “Sure.”

 

“You figure out what you’re going to do with Kylo?” Ben says. He doesn’t quite smile. “Gonna have him ride off into the sunset on a fathier?”

 

“Spoilers,” Armitage says. “Get some sleep.”

 

“What’s that?” Ben says, yawning.

 

“I said, get some sleep,” Armitage says. “You look awful.”

 

Ben laughs. He rubs at his eyes again. “Thanks. See you.”

 

Armitage regrets his decision the second he steps outside:  it’s unseasonably, unreasonably cold. He looks up at Ben’s building and sees a shadow in the window. A moment later, the light goes out.

 

Armitage burrows deeper into his coat and skulks toward the station.

 

 

 

“You need to loosen up,” Ben said, a few days before he tendered his resignation.

 

Armitage can’t remember now what they were arguing about—a formula, probably, or a badly formatted dataset. He _did_ loosen up that very evening, out of pure spite, plucking Ben’s whiskey out of his hands—not a jägerbomb, not anymore—and throwing it down his throat. It burned all the way down, and his cheeks burned, too, under Ben’s dark stare. They ended up walking along the river at two in the morning, arguing about alignments. Eventually, Ben put his hand on the nape of Armitage’s neck and kissed him.

 

Armitage breathed in sharply, floundering, and Ben pulled away with a muttered apology.

 

They didn’t talk about it the next day. They certainly didn’t talk about it at the farewell party, where they retreated to their separate corners and shook hands primly at the end of the evening, and Armitage thought to himself, with a tinge of sadness, that that was the end of that.

 

And it seems to have been. Ben doesn’t mention it when he texts in March, just as the trees are beginning to bud with leaves. He doesn’t mention it when Armitage shows up at Finn’s horrifyingly cramped new flat the next week, carrying a bottle of excessively expensive wine, either; he doesn’t mention it when Armitage comes to watch him train, or on those rare occasions when they are able to leave their respective offices to snatch a late lunch outside, amid the tourists and the suits, no matter the weather, staring out over the waterfront.

 

Armitage is starting to wonder whether he hallucinated the entire episode. Until—

 

_You wanna stay over?_

 

 _Kinda weird vibes_ , Poe said. Poe has no idea.

 

 

 

February slips into March. Ben goes to an industry conference. Rey is still in California. Armitage meets Finn, Rose, and Poe in Jackson Heights to complete the casino planet storyline. They wander past Lord Buddha Wireless and into a rival cell phone emporium. At the very back of the long green-carpeted hallway is a dingy little Tibetan restaurant, with a framed and flower-wreathed picture of the Dalai Lama and endless refills of hot butter tea.

 

“Okay, I have to ask,” Finn says, while Poe goes to the counter to place their order and Rose gets up to refill her Styrofoam cup. “What’s going on with Ben?”

 

“What do you mean?” Armitage says.

 

“You know what I mean,” Finn says.

 

Rose returns to the table, wincing as she sloshes scalding tea over her fingers. Finn leaps up to wipe away the mess. Poe hurries back to kiss her fingers better.

 

Their food arrives, drenched in red oil. They gulp down dumplings and noodles, and Armitage describes Admiral Holdo’s sacrifice, of her ship and her life, the splitting of the enemy’s mega-class destroyer in the black vacuum of space. The image glitters in the air between them.

 

Poe wipes at the corner of his eye. “It’s fucking spicy,” he says, and sniffs. Rose squeezes his hand.

 

 

 

Finn hosts again. It’s Friday, the first of April, and Armitage checks his seat before he takes it, wary of whoopee cushions or other pranks. Finn grins as he catches Armitage at it.

 

“Ye of little faith,” he says.

 

“I know better,” Armitage says. Sure enough, as Poe leaps into his chair, there is a loud, prolonged _bluuuuurp_.

 

“You dick,” Poe says, laughing. He pulls out the whoopee cushion and lobs it at Finn’s face. It transpires that Poe taped cling-film across Finn’s bedroom door, lying in wait to record the ensuing chaos on his phone. He shows Armitage the footage:  Finn yawning as he blunders into the trap and _bounces_ backward, landing on his bed with a shout. Poe has already turned the video into several gifs.

 

Rose brews a pot of tea. Poe produces a hip flask and passes it around the table, and then they wait, and wait, and wait.

 

Rey arrives thirty minutes late, head tilted, phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder, evidently in the midst of a serious conversation. She shrugs apologetically at them but stays on the phone as she removes her boots, nodding along. Armitage, watching Ben, notices how his gaze glues itself to Rey’s face, tracking every minute movement of her mouth and eyes.

 

“Okay,” Rey says, joining them at the table, “yes, I will. Of course. No problem at all, Leia,” and hangs up.

 

“Work issues?” Armitage inquires carefully. Ben looks away.

 

Rey slumps back in her chair. “Yeah, I guess,” she says. She accepts a cup of tea from Rose with a grateful smile and wraps her hands around it, sighing into the steam.

 

Armitage starts them with a recap. They go around the table, retelling the events of the last few sessions, just to make sure they’re all on the same page. Then they launch into a boss battle, a final confrontation between Finn and his former commander aboard the burning star destroyer. Armitage draws liberally from firm legends about Finn’s departure, throwing in fireworks and laser axes. Finn rolls a seven; he drop-kicks Captain Phasma backwards into a crevasse, but a subsequent explosion knocks him flat. Rose sprints to his rescue as the floor begins to collapse beneath them.

 

Having been loaded, unconscious, into the medbay aboard an escaping Resistance transport, with dangerously low hit points, Poe should be in no position to help Finn or Rose, but of course, he disagrees. He erupts into an obnoxious run of beeping and whistling, sending the droid, BB-8, to the rescue, while Finn and Rose cheer and Armitage puts his head in his hands.

 

Moments after Finn and Rose flee the crumbling hangar, Rey’s phone lights up on the table, where she’s laid it flat. They all glance at it. _Chewie_ , the screen says, and the photo is of a man in a trucker hat, who looks composed primarily of glossy brown beard and hair, a real Sasquatch. Armitage has been working on a deal with a tech company based in San Jose and recognizes the area code:  California again.

 

“Shit,” Rey says, softly. “Excuse me.”

 

She goes into Finn’s bedroom to take the call.

 

No matter; Rey has already escaped the star destroyer. Armitage has Ben roll to defy danger; he succeeds and awakens to find an NPC staring down at him, one of his generals. Armitage, voicing the NPC, asks how Ben plans to eradicate the remaining rebels.

 

Ben, however, has taken one too many swigs from the hip flask.

 

“I throttle the general for questioning me,” he says.

 

“That’s enough, Ben,” Armitage says. He reminds Ben that his other generals have been killed or incapacitated by the Resistance cruiser’s desperate last attack. “If you kill this one, you risk hamstringing your entire operation.”

 

“Fuck the general,” Ben says loudly, “and fuck the operation. I do what I want.”

 

“Please keep in mind,” Armitage says through gritted teeth, “that your alignment is _lawful_ , not chaotic.”

 

“Don’t be so goddamn rigid, Hux,” Ben says. “Ninety-nine percent of the fun is in improvisation.”

 

“It’s not improvisation,” Armitage says, wounded to the core. He thinks of the hours spent rereading Tacitus and Livy, the spreadsheets tracking stats and experience points, the names and ranks of every minor First Order NPC. “It’s a narrative that I have worked very hard to build, and I refuse to sit by while you and your _rubbish_ paladin continually, deliberately, and maliciously subvert my authority—”

 

“Your _authority_?” Ben says, disbelieving. “What the hell, Hux, do you hear yourself right now?”

 

“Okay, time out,” Finn says. “Come on, guys, let’s keep it civil. Ben, admit it:  you’re kind of being a troll.”

 

“So it’s fine when Flyboy here goes off the wall, but when I do it, I’m a troll?” Ben says. “Okay.”

 

Finn’s bedroom door creaks open, and Rey leans out, phone in hand. Her face is pale. “Ben—can I talk to you for a sec?”

 

“No,” Ben says. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

 

Rey doesn’t reply; she just looks at him until he relents. He gets up with a heavy scrape of his chair and goes to her, jaw tight. They shut the door.

 

“Phew,” Poe says, taking a last gulp from the flask.

 

“Wow,” Rose says. “Ben’s kind of intense.”

 

“He’s basically Kylo Ren,” Finn says. “Like, the line is _very_ blurred.”

 

“I hope everything’s okay,” Rose says, looking at the closed door.

 

“Tally up your experience points,” Armitage says. He can hear Ben and Rey arguing behind the door. Ben’s voice rises; suddenly, unexpectedly, Rey shouts him down. “I think we’re done for the night.”

 

 

 

 _I’m sorry_ , Ben texts, at 1:34 a.m. _I’ll do better._

 

Armitage is awake when his phone buzzes; he’s been reviewing the data in a particularly egregious IPO model, jotting down scathing comments for the junior associate in charge. For some idiotic reason, he smiles down at the message, even as he wonders whether Ben has sent something similar to Rey.

 

 _See that you do_ , he types. He softens it by adding, _There’s much more to come for Kylo Ren, so do try to keep him alive._

 

 _:o_ , Ben says. _well shit now im kind of scared_

 

 _Good_ , Armitage says. _You should be._

Ben, 4:46 a.m.:  _have a good day at work_

 

Armitage grins like a maniac all the way to the office.

 

 

 

One week later, Rey dislocates Ben’s shoulder.

 

Their gym is holding a series of casual match-ups after its usual Saturday sparring classes, and both Ben and Rey are participating. Ben fights his own weight class, first, but when the bouts have finished, he and Rey square up, jokingly, and the gym erupts into cheers. Ben looks about the size of a young elephant next to Rey; when he stomps, the ground shakes, and the crowd rustles in anticipation. Within the first twenty seconds, their smiles have winked out, and the room is hushed:  the match is in earnest now. Rey matches Ben blow for blow and exceeds him in aggression. They stare at one another from their separate corners, and Armitage thinks about Snoke’s red room, a fantasy curling up in smoke.

 

He doesn’t hear the pop, but he does see Ben’s fist waver and collapse as his shoulder descends far beyond its natural limits. Finn’s shout of triumph trails off into a groan as he realizes what’s happened. Rey rears back, hands flying to her mouth.

 

“Oh my god,” Rey says, peering through her fingers, as though she can hardly bear to look. “Oh my god, Ben, I’m so sorry.”

 

“Ah, shit, fuck,” Ben says, grimacing. He tries to shrug Finn and Armitage away and swears again. “Rey, that was awesome. _Fuck_. That was really, really good—” the worst part is he looks almost pleased about it, eyes bright and shining “—you were fucking _unstoppable_ —”

 

“For pity’s sake, Ben!” Rey says, meeting Armitage’s incredulous stare with one of her own.

 

“Should we call an ambulance?” one of the instructors says from the edge of the mats.

 

“God, no,” Ben says, through gritted teeth.

 

“Come the fuck on, Ben, you have insurance,” Finn says.

 

“She didn’t break my _legs_ ,” Ben says. Rey flushes. “E.R.’s not far.”

 

“For fuck’s sake,” Armitage says. He pulls Uber up on his phone.

 

Ben doesn’t say much on the ride to the hospital (it’s not the worst their driver has seen; this is New York, after all), but Armitage can tell that he’s in pain; he’s gone pale and sweaty, and his uninjured hand is clenched into a fist on his thigh.

 

At A&E, Armitage produces Ben’s ID and insurance card from his wallet and fills out his information while Ben breathes quietly beside him, eyes closed in concentration. _Solo, Ben O_. A California-issued license verging on expiration. Ben’s hair is shorter in his photograph, and he looks thin and tanned and intolerably young. Armitage slides the cards back into their slots.

 

A young nurse with red scrubs and a briskly cheerful manner leads them to an empty room and helps Ben lie down in bed. She cuts off his t-shirt, then sets up an intravenous drip while a second woman arrives and pumps Ben full of drugs. Ben slumps back against the pillows, limp, and Armitage swallows noisily as the attending and her resident grind his shoulder into place, with a towel and a lot of wrenching and tugging. His stomach turns: it looks so savage, so imprecise, nineteenth century medicine in an otherwise gleaming and modern setting, and Ben’s body is arching in pain—

 

“God _damn_ ,” Ben mutters, chest heaving as he comes to. His shoulder is pulpy and mottled, bleeding a bit where they injected it with lidocaine. He stares at the ceiling, panting, and Armitage has an overwhelming urge to brush his sweaty hair from his eyes. He refrains.

 

“All right?” he says, feeling useless.

 

“Not gonna lie, ’m pretty fuckin’ embarrassed,” Ben mumbles. His voice is slurred and soft. “They’re just gonna put me in a sling. ’S not that exciting. You don’t have to stay, General. Get some lunch ’n’ call me when you get home.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Armitage says. He turns away from Ben’s dazed, dreamy stare and thumbs mechanically through his notifications.

 

 _How’s the patient?_ Rey asks, followed by a full paragraph of _:( :( :(_.

 

 _I hope they gave him the good drugs,_ Finn says. _That shit looked gnarly._

_Gnarly?????_ Poe says. _what are you, a surfer from the 90s?_

 

 _ben after dentist!!!_ Rose says in response. _video please_

 

 _Rose are you an archaeologist because that meme is fucking ancient_ , Poe says, _fuck, I taste the dust of centuries. your a terrible influence, return finn to the present pls and ty. @Armie tell Ben hes a warrior @Ben ur a champ_

 

“Poe bein’ a jackass again?” Ben says.

 

Armitage realizes that he’s frowning deeply; he stops. “No,” he says. “Just appalling all of my sensibilities with his grammar.”

 

“ _I’ll_ appall your sensibilities,” Ben mumbles.

 

“You appall me every day,” Armitage says.

 

“Good,” Ben says. “That’s good.”

 

“You aggravate and demoralize me,” Armitage says. He grips the metal railing along the side of the bed. “You irritate me and you frighten me, and you have driven me completely insane.”

 

“Have I?” Ben looks up at him through his lashes. His gaze is soft. “Good,” he says again.

 

Armitage gives in and smoothes the hair from his forehead.

 

 

 

Ben’s place is messier the next time he hosts, bedroom door flung wide open and bed unmade, dishes piled high in the sink, the window seat cluttered with unfolded laundry. He’s wearing faded black sweatpants and a thin gray t-shirt. The sling provided by the hospital is a shiny, plasticky navy blue, the most colorful thing in his entire flat.

 

Ben trails him across the room as he tidies, embarrassed. “You don’t have to—”

 

“As though I could DM properly in a sty like this,” Armitage says, loading and reloading the dishwasher until he achieves an ideal configuration. Ben makes a frustrated noise in his throat and retreats to the window seat to browse his phone. Armitage smiles to himself. He is the slightest bit pleased—vindicated, even:  the clean, modern, minimalist aesthetic of Ben’s adult life is a lie. He knew Ben was still a mess, a tornado of a human being, not too far beneath the surface.

 

He glances over his shoulder and catches Ben looking at him. Ben's mouth tilts into a smile as he meets Armitage’s stare.

 

Armitage flushes and turns back to the sink.

 

“Empty the bin, if you have time to laze about,” he snaps. “You can do that with one arm, can’t you?”

 

“Yes, sir, General Hux, sir,” Ben says, slow and amused. The door closes, and Armitage draws a deep breath, and loses it all in a rush when Ben come back and dangles his hand over the sink.

 

“The bag leaked,” he says. “Wash my hand for me?”

 

Armitage can feel him, the heat of him, radiating through the thin material of his t-shirt. Mechanically, he squeezes washing-up liquid onto the back of Ben’s hand and lathers it up. He means to do it quickly, but Ben swears at the scalding temperature of the water, which is, admittedly, actually steaming, and Armitage draws his hand back and adjusts the taps. He rubs the thumb joint of Ben’s hand while they wait for the water to cool. Ben sighs and rests his chin on Armitage’s shoulder. His palm is muscled and callused, warm under Armitage’s fingers. His cheek is hot against Armitage’s neck.

 

He turns his head; his lips brush Armitage’s ear—

 

The buzzer sounds. Ben groans in frustration. Armitage hurries to dry his hands.

 

Rey can’t make it again tonight; the Organa Foundation is holding a fundraising event. Ben answers the door, and Finn, Poe, and Rose pile inside with food and drink. Armitage settles them down by the window, and then he sends them, and Ben, ricocheting through a dramatic confrontation with enemy forces on the red surface of a small and forgotten mining planet.

 

There are several stops and starts, mostly because Ben keeps _staring_ at Armitage and making him lose his train of thought. Rose has to leave early to attend a friend’s play, and Armitage pauses the session just forty-five minutes later, at the arrival of the epic level swordsman, who has come to confront Kylo Ren. To try to kill him.

 

“To be continued,” Armitage says. He stands.

 

Ben hates cliffhangers, especially cliffhangers of this magnitude. Finn and Poe’s heads are already swiveling toward him, anticipating the outburst—

 

“Sure,” Ben says, getting up too. “To be continued.”

 

Finn looks between them. Then, without another word, he gets to his feet and walks to the door, shrugging his hoodie over his head.

 

Armitage’s face grows hot. A humming starts up in his ears.

 

“What, that’s it?” Poe says, staring up at Finn in bewilderment. “You’re just gonna let him cut us off? Just like that?”

 

“It’s late,” Finn says. “Time we got going.”

 

“What?” Poe says. “It’s not even ten o’cl—” Finn raises his eyebrows, urgently, and Poe’s eyes widen. “Well, would you look at the time,” he says, beginning to grin. He picks himself up and all but _saunters_ to the entryway to retrieve his shoes. “Well, _well_. I mean, good night. I mean, have a _good night_. A damn good one. Have f _fff_ —”

 

Finn hooks his fingers in the back of Poe’s collar and drags him through the door. It shuts behind them with a kind of dull finality.

 

“I’d better go,” Armitage says. He can barely hear his own voice over the pounding of his heart.

 

He reaches for his scarf.

 

“Hux,” Ben says, and Armitage goes still. Ben steps up beside him and slides the bolt home, his chest warm at Armitage’s back. Armitage turns, hardly daring to breathe. Ben is looking at him, intent; he brushes Armitage’s cheek with the knuckles of his good hand and bends forward.

 

Armitage leans against the door and closes his eyes. Ben presses against him, the sling between their bodies, his lips gentle at the corner of Armitage’s mouth.

 

“Stay over tonight,” Ben says, quiet. “I’ll take you to Pondicheri for breakfast.”

 

Armitage wants to say that he doesn’t give a toss about Pondicheri, neither the city nor the trendy restaurant and its salted alcoholic lassis, but he can’t find the words. Ben is staring into his eyes, waiting; his hand is cupped around Armitage’s jaw, fingers tracing circles over his pulse. Armitage breathes in. He strokes his thumbs across Ben’s face, rubbing at the shadows under his dark eyes, and then he runs his hands into Ben’s hair and kisses him again.

 

Ben sighs into his mouth. “Hux.”

 

They stumble into Ben’s bedroom. Armitage’s skin feels stretched tight, hot wherever Ben touches it. He helps Ben remove his sling and t-shirt, and sheds his own, sliding against Ben, chest to chest, slotting their mouths back together. Ben’s hand skates up and down the center of his back, tracing the bumps of his spine. He slides his thigh between Armitage’s legs, and Armitage moans and ruts against it.

 

“Shit—Hux—” Ben drags air into his lungs. His hand grips Hux’s hip. “Come here, sit up here.”

 

“No,” Armitage says. “Your shoulder—”

 

Ben smiles. “You’re not going to hurt me,” he says. “Come on. Come _on_ , Hux, sit on my fucking face and let me suck you off.”

 

“If you insist,” Armitage says unsteadily. He kneels over Ben, carefully positioning his arms and legs to avoid Ben’s injured shoulder, and then he gasps as Ben mouths at the tip of his cock, right through his pants. “Wait, wait—”

 

Ben doesn’t wait. He pulls Armitage’s pants down with a jerk of his hand, and Armitage braces himself against the headboard and moans like an idiot, thighs trembling, while Ben laps at him, reaching around to grip his arse, teasing Armitage with his thumb and making horrid, enthusiastically wet slurping noises with his mouth.

 

“Ben— _oh_ —”

 

“Fuck my face,” Ben says.

 

Armitage _sways_.

 

“Come on, do it,” Ben continues, steadying him with a squeeze to the back of his thigh, licking at his slit. “You’re gonna have to do some of the work, okay, babe? I’m injured here.”

 

“Ben,” Armitage whispers.

 

“Go ahead,” Ben says. He smiles. “Wanna feel you all the way in the back of my throat. Wanna choke on you.”

 

“ _Ben_ —”

 

“Come on,” Ben says again, so soft, and Armitage bites his lip and pushes in, gripping Ben’s hair. Ben closes his eyes, groaning low in his chest, and Armitage can’t stop gasping; he can feel Ben’s mouth working around him. He slides in all the way and rocks forward in tiny motions, fucking deeper and deeper into Ben’s throat.

 

Ben’s breaths grow harsh, gusting out through his nostrils. There are tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, trickling down the sides of his face; Armitage starts to wipe them away, hands trembling, and then he grabs at the headboard with a low cry, crunching forward as he comes.

 

Ben gags, and Armitage withdraws apologetically—

 

“Touch me,” Ben gasps, dribbling a bit. Then he swallows. The burning flush has spread down his neck; Armitage is seized by a sudden and terrible desire to bite him all over. “Hux—Armitage—oh, god, please.”

 

Armitage reaches under the elastic of Ben’s sweatpants and fists his cock, and Ben swears, eyes fluttering shut. 

 

“ _Fuck_ —”

 

Armitage brings him off slowly, tenderly, sprawled across his body, kissing at the juncture between his neck and shoulder, Ben’s fingers curling tight in his hair.

 

Ben goes to rinse out his mouth and comes back with a towel and a glass of water. He hands both items to Armitage and then stands awkwardly by the bed, rubbing at the back of his neck as Armitage looks him over.

 

“Like what you see?” he says eventually.

 

Armitage snorts. “Obviously,” he says. “As I demonstrated, moments ago, obviously, yes.” He folds the towel and places it on the floor, then drains the glass, setting it carefully down beneath the bed, well out of harm’s way. “You’ve lived here for years, Solo; why haven’t you got any furniture at all? You need a nightstand.”

 

“Come pick something out with me,” Ben says.

 

“I thought you were taking me to breakfast,” Armitage says. He raises his arms, and Ben slides into them, bearing him backwards onto the sheets.

 

“After breakfast,” Ben says, nosing at his cheek. He smells like toothpaste. Armitage smiles and trails his fingers across Ben’s lips. Ben smiles, too, slow and pleased, and Armitage tilts his head up to kiss him.

 

 

 

They wake up late and go to Pondicheri. Ben holds his hand under the table while they order.

 

 

 

Spring deepens into summer. Rey is spending more and more time in California, missing session after session. Armitage scrambles to adapt, leaving her character aboard her starship until further notice. Inside Finn’s muggy flat, raising his voice to be heard over the whine of Finn’s useless window A/C unit, he explains to the remaining members of the party that things are looking bleak for the Resistance. They are besieged in a cave with no escape, with imperial soldiers closing in on the wall with a massive cannon, the science fiction equivalent of a battering ram. Ben, about to become entangled in his own duel with the epic level swordsman, laughs at their exclamations of dismay. Armitage smiles and asks how they would like to proceed.

 

“Permission to jump in an X-Wing and blow everything up,” Poe says.

 

“Denied. You don’t have any X-Wings,” Armitage reminds him. Only a group of battered, ancient rust-bucket surface ships:  ski speeders, Armitage calls them.

 

“Different vehicle, same sentiment regarding massive, uncontainable destruction,” Poe says. Armitage shrugs. Poe gets into a ski speeder.

 

Finn and Rose decide to go, too.

 

“I’m gonna destroy that fucking cannon,” Finn says, looking determined.

 

“And I’m going to protect the people I love,” Rose says. She grins. “Especially since they’ve been rolling like shit recently.”

 

Armitage turns to Ben.

 

He looks thoughtful. He says, “I’d like to concentrate all firepower on the swordsman.”

 

“You’re supposed to duel him one-on-one, you arse,” Armitage says.

 

“I will, I will,” Ben says, “but can I shoot him first? With every gun I have?” He rolls a ten. “C’mon, babe, please.”

 

“Oh, very well,” Armitage says. Poe is looking between them with a shit-eating grin on his face; Armitage ignores him. “Open fire!”

 

 

 

Ben starts sleeping over on Fridays, and then on Sundays, too. He adds a black toothbrush to the bathroom—completely black, bristles and all—and his own set of towels. All the doormen know him by name.

 

Whenever Ben stays the night, he gets up at two a.m. to check on the overseas markets. It would irritate Armitage, but he’s usually already awake and doing exactly the same thing. He finishes his work first and traces his fingers along Ben’s arm until Ben can’t stand it anymore, slamming his laptop shut and hauling Armitage bodily back to bed. Once, when Ben proves particularly resistant to his charms, Armitage kneels down under the table and sucks Ben’s cock for the fun of it, all while Ben is instant-messaging with analysts in London and Tokyo. Ben’s hands shake over the keyboard, and he folds over with a gasp.

 

“Fuck, Hux, _stop_ ,” Ben manages. “I really have to—” Armitage looks up at him, drooling a bit, and watches as Ben’s eyes glaze over. Ben shudders. “Oh, fuck,” he says. He pushes his laptop away. “Oh, fuck yeah— _fuck_ —”

 

They kiss, they talk, they fall into bed. Every morning at five, like clockwork, they are awakened by Millicent’s plaintive meows and the noise of her claws scrabbling at the door. She’s never pleased to be locked out.

 

“Come here, Millicent,” Armitage says, filling her bowl one Monday morning, “come here, baby.”

 

“You’re so nice to the cat,” Ben complains.

 

“Does it bother you?” Armitage says.

 

“No,” Ben says defensively, and then, “Yes. You should be nice to _me_. Be sweet to _me._ ”

 

Armitage raises an eyebrow. “You want me to pat your head and call you ‘honey’ and ‘babe’ and all that guff?” he says.

 

“Yeah,” Ben says. “All of that—uh—guff.”

 

“All right,” Armitage says, “whatever you want, _sweetheart_ ,” and Ben’s eyes widen, and he breathes in sharply. Armitage grins. “Darling,” he purrs. Ben is swallowing, shaking his head. He steps back, and Armitage steps forward, fingers light on his chest. “My only one.”

 

Ben bites his lip. Armitage laughs at him; his laugh turns into a murmur of appreciation as Ben pushes him against the bathroom door and kisses him hard. They get into the shower together.

 

Ben and Armitage ride the subway to Wall Street, eyes forward, legs brushing, passing a thermos of strong, sludge-like coffee back and forth as the train starts and stops, starts and stops. Armitage has never been so tired, or so happy. His chest is swelling with it, with an uncontrollable, giddy happiness, so light that he’s sure he’ll wake up one day to find himself floating above the city, lost forever to the stratosphere.

 

 

 

The balloon bursts soon enough. In July, Ben has to postpone and cancel a number of dates, thanks to a troublesome client and a series of weekend emergencies. He shows up at Armitage’s flat a few hours after the most recent cancellation, wild-eyed, sweating, windblown, and eats leftovers angrily at Armitage’s table.

 

“Fucking Christ, I’d happily choke the shit out of each and every single one of these entitled assholes,” Ben mutters, throwing down his fork with a clatter. “Sometimes I fucking hate my job.”

 

“Resign, then,” Armitage says. “Go work for the Organa Foundation. Hasn’t Rey been trying to convince you for months?” _Though not very tactfully_ , he thinks, remembering the argument at Finn’s flat.

 

Ben’s body goes stiff and still. “Are you telling me to move to California?” he says. His tone is light, jovial, but he’s looking at Armitage with something strange in his eyes, a wariness.

 

“Get a job in the New York office, idiot,” Armitage says. “Though you could have your pick of locations, I’m sure. They’d welcome you with open arms.”

 

“The Foundation?” Ben says. The wariness grows. “Why would they do that?”

 

“Why _wouldn’t_ they?” Armitage says. “The prodigal son, returning to his roots after six years in the private sector. Great press.” He notices Ben’s stare, the color flooding his cheeks. “What’s wrong?”

 

“How did you—” Ben controls himself with an effort. “How long have you— _when_ —”

 

Armitage gawps at him. “When?” he says. “What do you mean, _when_? I’ve always known. We Googled all of the summer interns before making offers. It wasn’t exactly a secret. Your mother has a Wikipedia page, for god’s sake.”

 

Ben’s face grows scarlet. “I thought it was,” he says. “A secret.” His voice is thick. “And I won’t—I won’t—I’ll never work for her.”

 

“Why on earth not?” Armitage says, bewildered.

 

“Because,” Ben bites out. “Because I’m done with them—with the Organas, with the fucking foundation, with the whole fucking family. I cut ties.”

 

“What?” Armitage says.

 

“I said _I cut ties_ ,” Ben repeats.

 

Armitage stares at Ben, stares _through_ him, unseeing, scanning through his memories. The pieces are falling into place now—Ben’s abrupt change in personality between one summer and the next, his continuous presence in the office around the holidays, his barren flat, empty of family photographs or keepsakes. They’re falling into place, but the mosaic they create is distorted, nonsensical.

 

“I didn’t take any of her money,” Ben is saying, earnestly. “I didn’t even take her name. I want you to know that, Hux. This apartment—my life—all of it—I built it myself.”

 

“Are you delusional?” Armitage hears himself saying, as though from a great distance away.

 

Ben’s mouth trembles. “I thought you’d understand,” he says. “Your family—”

 

Armitage raises his voice. “Do you think a mere _change of name_ can sever the past from you? Who paid for your schooling, Ben? Who raised you? Fed you, clothed you? Arranged for private lessons—private tutors—”

 

Ben’s head snaps up. “What the hell kind of upbringing do you think I had?” he demands. He looks at Armitage with fire in his eyes.

 

“A _nice_ one,” Armitage says. He thinks of his own childhood, the cold and lonely days torn by the noise of jingling keys in the door and Brendol Hux’s heavy rising shout—the memory of his own little white hand trembling above his sums, squeezing down so hard on the yellow pencil that it snaps in two—the drag of boots on the stairs—

 

He thinks of the fifth Google Images search result, a photo of Ben, little Ben, in his small black suit and bowtie, looking solemnly into the camera, not a hair out of place, calm and lovely in someone’s topiary garden, holding his mother’s hand—holding and not clutching—

 

When he can speak again, he is snarling. “You had every advantage. The best that money could buy. Wealth, prestige— _power_ —you were raised to it, raised to inherit, and you threw it all away—you threw it away! Like it was nothing. And you’re _proud_ of it. You’re _proud_ of it, what a fucking waste. My god, Solo, you’re a spoilt little shit!”

 

Ben’s face is white. “Is that what you really think about me?” he says. “Well—well, fuck you, Armitage—”

 

“Oh, _very_ witty,” Armitage says. “ _Very_ clever, Solo! Full marks!”

 

“ _Fuck_ _you_ ,” Ben shouts. He slams his fist on the table, rattling his plate, and Armitage jolts. “Fuck you, you condescending jackass. You don’t know shit. You don’t know _anything_ about anything.”

 

Armitage breathes in shakily. His hands are trembling; he hides them from view.

 

“Get out,” he says.

 

“Gladly,” Ben sneers. The door is too heavy to pull back and slam. Ben shoulders roughly through it, a dark swooping shadow, and disappears. Armitage stares unblinkingly at the carpet in the corridor beyond, until his eyes sting and his vision starts to blur, until the door shuts.

 

 

 

Armitage is all set to ignore Ben’s apology text, but it never comes. He’s ominously absent from the group chat, reading messages and never replying to any. Armitage cracks first and calls him, once, twice, three times, pacing a groove by the window. Each call goes straight to voicemail.

 

He tries not to think about it. He marks up status reports, meets with buyers, edits ten pitchbooks in three days, eats, reads, tries to sleep. Millicent burrows under his hand, chirping at him as he sits dull-eyed on the couch at four in the morning.

 

The next session is set for early afternoon on the coming Saturday, at Finn’s again. At 9:46 p.m. the night before, Ben messages:

 

_sry cant make tmrws session_

 

 _fam emergency_ , he adds, which Armitage knows is a bald-faced fucking lie.

 

 _Sorry to hear that_ , Finn says. _Hope everything’s okay. Everyone else still good to go?_

 

 _No LEts cancel,_ Armitage says. _since bens out._ He’s so irritated that he doesn’t bother to correct the mistakes.

 

 _Nooo!_ Rose says, with a series of crying emojis. Poe and Finn are still typing out their responses. After a moment, Rey starts to type too.

 

Ben has already gone offline. Seething, Armitage turns off his phone.

 

 

 

There are only 30 unread messages in the group chat by Monday morning—a bad sign. Armitage doesn’t read them. He has two missed calls and a text from Rey— _Call me, please_ —and nothing further from Ben. He silences his phone and heads into a meeting.

 

 

 

Ben calls on Friday, just before sunrise. Armitage thinks about letting it go to voicemail, about forcing Ben to try again and again and _again_ in growing desperation, but by the time the thought is complete, he’s already swiping up to accept the call. Slowly, he raises the phone to his ear.

 

“Hux?” Ben says, quiet.

 

Armitage doesn’t respond. He waits.

 

“My dad died,” Ben says.

 

Armitage sucks in a sharp breath. “Ben,” he says. “I—my sincere condolences.”

 

“I’m in Sacramento,” Ben says. “I flew out on Saturday. I knew he was going, I knew for _months_ , I knew this was it, but I still waited until Saturday to fly out, and I—I—I didn’t get here in time. I did that on purpose.” He laughs, quiet and bitter. “They said he was asking for me.”

 

“Ben,” Armitage says.

 

“I saw his body,” Ben continues, low. “He looked like—like a fucking shriveled up husk of a human being. I barely recognized him. I—”

 

Ben’s voice sounds so _ragged_. Armitage’s throat constricts. “Ben,” he says, “are you—”

 

“The service is today,” Ben says. He clears his throat. “Rey’s here. She’s been here since Wednesday. She got here before me, to say goodbye. She’s giving a eulogy. I’m not.”

 

“Ben—”

 

“I have to go,” Ben says. “I’ll call you—” he trails off, hesitant. “Can I call you again later?” he says.

 

“Yes,” Armitage says, “yes, sweetheart, of course.”

 

 

 

He doesn’t, in the end. Armitage calls Rey and gets her on the second try.

 

“Pancreatic cancer,” she says. “God, Armie, it’s been so awful. Leia’s in pieces, and Chewie—” she breaks off, voice trembling. “He went so fast. I mean, the prognosis wasn’t good, we knew that from the beginning. I just—we all just were hoping—for a little more time—another six months—another year—”

 

Armitage gives her a moment to collect herself.

 

“Is Ben—”

 

“Ben’s a mess,” Rey says, “even if he won’t admit it.”

 

“Are you angry with him?” Armitage says.

 

“I was,” Rey says. “I was, for a long time—”

 

“Is that why you dislocated his shoulder?” Armitage says, then winces— _Not the time, Hux,_ he thinks to himself.

 

But Rey laughs, albeit somewhat wetly. “No, come on,” she says. She sobers. “I didn’t understand why he was being so stubborn, why he was so angry. I still don’t, really. But that’s his stuff to unpack, not mine.”

 

“Tell him I’m thinking of him,” Armitage says. He swallows hard. “Tell him—tell him I—” He can’t get the words out.

 

Rey says, gently, “He knows.”

 

 

 

The rest of the week passes in a haze, the whole world narrowing down to the blank, black screen of Armitage’s phone. He writes and rewrites the same five bullet points in a presentation slide, uncomprehending, sends outdated versions of spreadsheets to his team of analysts for review, among a multitude of other tiny mistakes, piling up like papercuts. His subordinates treat him with surprising tenderness, herding him from the office relatively early on Friday—it’s seven p.m., and the sun has only just set—telling him to get some rest. He spends the evening flipping restlessly through his shelves, unable to decide what to read.

 

A little after nine, he hears a knock on his door. He hurries to open it, Millicent following curiously at his heels.

 

Ben is standing in the hallway with his suitcase. “Hey,” he says. He looks pale and worn. His hair is limp against his scalp, his suit crumpled.

 

 _Funeral black_ , Armitage thinks. He opens his arms, and Ben steps into them with a sigh.

 

Millicent winds happily around their ankles, purring with the force of a diesel engine.

 

“I’m really sorry,” Ben says. He smells like a plane cabin—dry recycled air, antibacterial gels and antiseptics, and faintly, unwashed socks. Armitage doesn’t care. He squeezes Ben in his arms, and Ben groans into his shoulder. “All that horrible stuff I said—”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Armitage says. He holds Ben tighter. “I’m the one who should be—I—I owe you an apology.”

 

“Don’t,” Ben mumbles. “Don’t, please. Let’s just forget about it. God, Hux. I’m so tired.”

 

“Stay over tonight,” Armitage says softly. “I’ll make you dinner.”

 

Ben takes a nap in Armitage’s bed and showers while Armitage cooks. He defrosts two cod fillets under hot water and bakes them with salt, pepper, olive oil, fennel, and onion. Ben flips absentmindedly through _History of the Peloponnesian War_ on the couch while the flat fills with delicious smells and Millicent circles Armitage’s feet in increasing agitation; his hair is dripping onto the leather, but Armitage doesn’t say anything.

 

They eat together in silence. An hour later, Armitage presses Ben back into his bed and jerks him off, gently, nosing at him, kissing the gasps from his lips. Ben comes with a quiet exhalation, stomach tightening. He winds his hand into Armitage’s hair as Armitage reaches over him for the tissues, pulling him down to kiss. He holds Armitage there, tight against his body, stroking him relentlessly until he trembles and tips over the edge.

 

Ben lets go, and Armitage wipes them both off. Beneath him, Ben takes a shuddering breath and looks away quickly. The multicolored lights of the city, stealing in through the curtains, flash across the sudden wetness in his eyes.

 

Armitage gets up to flush the crumpled tissues and wash his hands. Ben kisses him again when he comes back, cupping the nape of his neck, soft and sweet. His face is damp. Armitage lies down beside him and goes to sleep.

 

 

 

He wakes to sun pouring in through the window and the fantastic sight of Millicent wrapped around Ben’s head like a fuzzy orange balaclava. Millicent opens one eye insolently and closes it again as Armitage snickers, and Ben, eyes still sealed shut, mumbles, “’Morning.”

 

His voice is rough. Armitage slides his hands under Ben’s t-shirt, rubbing along his sides. Millicent flounces away with an indignant flick of her tail.

 

“Hey,” Ben says.

 

“Hey,” Armitage says, and Ben opens his eyes. “Coffee?”

 

“Please,” Ben says. He sits up, rubbing at his eyes. Armitage leans forward to kiss the edge of his palm, his cheek, his smile.  

 

 

 

“They used to fight all the time,” Ben says. He sits hunched at the table, hands clasped around one of Armitage’s double-walled glass mugs as Armitage fills it with coffee. “I know you think it was all toys and parties and, fuck, I don’t know, _fencing_ lessons, rich people bullshit, but my parents weren’t like that. They were ordinary people. They married young. They had no idea what the fuck they were doing. They didn’t know how to talk to each other. How to take care of a kid. They’d scream and throw things. My dad would drive up north with a trucker buddy of his and just—just disappear, just go off the grid—for months at a time. And then he’d be back, and things would be okay for a while, and then it’d start all over again.”

 

He takes a long sip. Armitage pours for himself and sits.

 

“I used to think I’d have to kill him,” Ben says. “Both of them. In order to be free.” He laughs to himself. “Turns out all I had to do was move to New York.”

 

Armitage thinks of Brendol, of his rages and his icy silences, the messes, the shouting, the broken glass. He doesn’t know where Brendol is now—a pauper’s grave in Maidstone seems likely. He’s put an ocean between them. He could put an entire planet between them, a whole system of stars, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

 

“They sent me to live with Luke—my uncle Luke—in high school. Anaheim. We’d get high and he’d say stuff like, ‘Forgive your parents. They’re good people. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.’ Guilty-trippy shit like that.” His voice tightens. “I was a child,” he says. “I thought everything that was happening was my fault. I thought I was the reason their marriage was falling apart.”

 

Armitage remembers another cup of coffee, another conversation. A sarcastic smile. Ben, self-deprecating, confiding:  _I’m a monster._

 

“They shouldn’t have put me through that,” Ben says. His hand curls into a fist. “So my mom has a lot of money and saves thousands of children with her foundation. So my dad died with my name on his lips. So they took to Rey like she was a long-lost daughter. _So what?_ ”

 

Armitage has a different set of ghosts, differently exorcised. The past will never truly die, he thinks. It flows through them, through every synapse, every cell of their bodies, influencing their actions on a subatomic level. Brendol is gone, long sunk in the deepness of memory, but the ripples remain.

 

And Ben is sunk just as deep into Armitage’s bones—both the Ben of the past, fresh-faced, grinning, and exuberant, and the Ben sitting opposite him right now, red-eyed, exhausted, gazing at him with a rather hangdog expression.

 

Armitage reaches across the table. After a moment, Ben takes his hand.

 

 

 

The final session of the second campaign takes place just over a month later.

 

Kylo Ren defeats the epic level swordsman, though barely. The encounter rattles him, and Armitage describes him kneeling in the cavernous darkness of the abandoned rebel base, unsettled, meditating on his choices. Following a dogfight with enemy pilots through the hollow, mined-out core of the mineral planet, Rey levels up. She chooses a new advanced skill and uses it to rescue Finn, Rose, and Poe, as well as the wretched remnants of the Resistance, unearthing them from beneath a rockslide. They blast into hyperspace.

 

“To be continued,” Armitage says. Poe claps him heartily on the back.

 

They go to Má Pêche for the celebratory dinner. Drinks all around; desserts afterward from the milk bar upstairs.

 

Rey is first to peel from the group—she has another early flight, California-bound. She hugs Ben before she goes, pressing her cheek to his shoulder, tiny in his arms. Finn, Poe, and Rose say goodnight at the corner and descend into Lexington station. As they reach the bottom of the stairs, Finn throws his head back, shouting with laughter. They disappear from view.

 

Armitage thinks about the rest of the evening. He and Ben will go back to the flat. They’ll curl up on the sofa together, and Ben will work on a new pitch while Millicent tries to sit on his keyboard. Armitage will try to finish reading _Bellum Catilinae_. He’ll dive into the last few chapters with the best of intentions and then find himself stretching his legs across Ben’s thighs less than an hour later, dislodging both Millicent and the laptop, and Ben will look at him with dark eyes and take him to bed.

 

On Saturday, Ben will wake up early and go to his sparring class. Armitage will sleep in. He’ll drink the coffee that Ben brings home. They’ll finish unpacking the boxes labeled _Kitchen_ together.

 

“Hux,” Ben says. He’s looking at Armitage, eyes soft and a little amused, smiling ever so slightly. “Ground control to General Hux,” he says. “You in there?”

 

“Just thinking about what’s next,” Armitage says.

 

“For the third campaign?” Ben says.

 

“Among other things,” Armitage says. He slips his hand around Ben’s for a moment, squeezes, lets go. Ben’s smile widens. They continue up the street. The city rises above them, glittering with light.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Meta [here](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/171577832734/kylux-fic-the-light-in-your-hands-repost-meta). If you liked, please [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/171577832734/kylux-fic-the-light-in-your-hands-repost-meta)!


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